Poncie Rutsch: Hey, it's Poncie from the podcasting team.

Local podcasts from WAMU

bring this community together. And when you make a gift of support right now, you can
select the Capital Area Food Bank partnership as your thank you gift and a portion of your
donation will help provide healthy meals to neighbors in need. During this crisis, give today
at WAMU.org. And thanks.

Patrick Fort: So, Ruth, we've been working from home cooking from home for a long time
now. What are you making? What are you, what are you, what are you chewing on?

Ruth Tam: : What am I chewing on? Uh, my existential sense of dread!

Patrick Fort: : Is it filling?

Ruth Tam: : It's too filling. I've been really good about cooking, but honestly, it's starting to
get to me. Like, I'm tired. The longer that we stay at home, like, the harder it gets to take
care of myself. And this week I indulged a little bit. I saw that El Tamarindo, one of my
favorite restaurants in Adams Morgan, is open again. So I got takeout.

El Tamarindo employee: El Tamarindo, buenas tardes.

Ruth Tam: Hi, I'd like to place an order for takeout.

Ruth Tam: I remember that day was kind of gray, little drizzly, which was kind of a relief. I
didn't think about it too much when I placed my order, but if I had to go pick it up. I was
kind of glad it was gloomier out because it meant I'd run into less people on the street.

El Tamarindo employee: Uh, ten minutes, will be ready.

Ruth Tam: Okay, great. Thank you.

Ruth Tam: Here it is, El Tamarindo. "We're open, call in, carryout." Look at all those signs.
"Thank you for social distancing. Stop, face mass required. Stop, one person at a time,
please." Doesn't look like there's anybody else here.

Ruth Tam: There was a huge plastic barrier between like the customer and like whoever's
operating from that stand. And there was like a little container of sanitized pens to sign
receipts. And I picked up my order, a pupusa, a tamale, rice and beans and plantains.
Before all of this, whenever I ordered takeout, all I heard in my head was my mom's voice
telling me, "You have food at home." But now there are more things to consider besides
my mom's voice in my head. El Tamarindo is one of the first places I ate when I moved
here and it's one of the reasons why I feel connected to my neighborhood and to D.C. El
Tamarindo was closed for the first month of the pandemic. So part of me ordering food
from them came from a place of not wanting to see them go out of business. But at the
same time, I was thinking about the risk of leaving my apartment. The health of the people
making the food, the drivers that bring it to other people. I was seeing all these
vulnerabilities and wondering what are the bigger costs of keeping El Tamarindo in
business?

Patrick Fort: I'm thinking about some of the same things when I go grocery shopping.
Like, when you're second home in the midst of this pandemic health crisis, every decision
seems to mean so much more. Like, it's not just what am I going to buy? Which store am I
going to go to? How do I know if I'm not buying too many things? It's how do I keep
grocery store workers safe? And there's also the future of local farms to consider.

Ruth Tam: Right. I'm getting takeout and going to the grocery store. So for me, it's really a
mix of these smaller personal questions and big picture questions. They're all variables in
this like ethical equation of how I get food. I'm Ruth Tam.

Patrick Fort: And I'm Patrick Fort. This week on Dish City, how do our food choices affect
others during a pandemic? How can we be mindful consumers at restaurants and grocery
stores? And what is this pandemic showing us about the ugliness of our food system?

Ruth Tam: So I was thinking about all these questions when I went to go get takeout and
in an order to continue grappling with this moral question of supporting local restaurants
and how to continue getting takeout, I needed to know what kind of financial and emotional
burden El Tamarindo's closing had on the people that worked there. So I called up Ana
Reyes, the manager at El Tamarindo. Her family owns a place. You might remember her
from our Pupusas's episode.

Ana Reyes: Our operation was nothing compared to what it is normally. So that was kind
of scary. Every Uber driver, delivery person that came in. You know, everybody that you
came in contact with, they were just scared. Everybody was on edge.

Ruth Tam: Were your parents in the restaurant or your dad always?

Ana Reyes: No, no. Both of them were home.

Ruth Tam: Now, I know every time I I come into your family's restaurant, I feel like nine
times out of ten. I see your father there. Was it weird for him to be home? Did he feel...just
what was that like for him?

Ana Reyes: It's not easy to see a 60, 70, 80 percent drop in your business and think
logically in how you're going to make this work, you know? And I think the decision to
close it was just really understanding that this was something greater than us. For me, it
was also a very personal decision. I'm, um, I'm a single mom. And my dad was staying
home, so I've been running the business with my dad. It was like, OK, I don't know how
this is gonna happen. How am I going to leave...and then school...we'd already started a
distance learning. So it was it was really it was a lot to take in, to see, you know, to figure
out how we were...How this was going to function.

Ruth Tam: Are you doing a lot of business on those delivery apps? I'm kind of curious
about them. They're kind of like a...I feel like a black hole, to me, in terms of understanding
how they work and how good they are for restaurants.

Ana Reyes: You do share...that percentage that you pays is quite high. However, I don't
know how...you do get volume. You do get volume. We're kind of dependent on them right
now. That's not sustainable where business is completely dependent on the business
that's generated through those delivery ups. So again, where we're brainstorming and
implementing other ways that we can generate some some some income.

Ruth Tam: When you say that the business is dependent on these delivery apps, does
that mean that like the majority of your business so far this first week has come through
those delivery apps?
Ana Reyes: Yeah, yes.

Ruth Tam: OK. And like, how do they how do they compare in terms of what percentage
gets taken out? Do you know which apps, which platforms are slightly better for
restaurants and others?

Ana Reyes: I'll just say we get most of our volume from GrubHub.

Ruth Tam: So it kind of doesn't matter that you're...that you get some percentage taken
out of each one. If they have enough...if they're bringing in enough orders. It doesn't...you
know, it makes up for it, is what you're saying.

Ana Reyes: Yeah.

Ruth Tam: Can you ballpark a guess of how much percentage they take out of each
order?

Ana Reyes: I rather not share. If you don't mind.

Ruth Tam: I mean, I think what I'm just curious about is like if people are considering
doing delivery, you know, what platform should they use and...or like, should they make
the effort to go pick it up themselves?

Ana Reyes: Well, it's definitely preferable for us if people order over the phone or come in
person. You know, just wait outside because we're not paying those fees because they are
hefty. So that's definitely preferable for us.

Patrick Fort: It's hard to hear Ana have to grapple between having orders come from
GrubHub, where a large portion of the order is sent off in fees and on the other hand,
having no business at all.

Ruth Tam: Yeah, I think delivery is really important for them right now. Like, I didn't get
delivery because I can just walk to El Tamarindo, but that's not an option for everyone. It's
essential for people who want food and want to support, but can't otherwise just walk and
get it. And right now it's a lifeline for people like Anna. I think it's just the reliance on these
delivery apps in particular that's giving me pause.

Patrick Fort: Yeah. When these apps first started popping up, it wasn't entirely clear to
me how they made money. I assumed there was some sort of like delivery fee or delivery
rate that I paid for. But it turns out that they charge the restaurants, too. Like when you see
these ads for GrubHub or UberEats, or whatever, you know, they'll advertise like 30
percent off your order or whatever. But it turns out that the restaurant ends up paying for
that. And that's just one example. There are tons of ways restaurants end up footing the
bill for delivery apps.

Ruth Tam: Right. A bunch of major cities are already talking about limiting fees delivery
apps charge restaurants. San Francisco and Seattle have already started doing this. And
the D.C. Council actually just passed a 15 percent cap for service fees. I'm not sure how
delivery apps planned to make up this difference, but my guess is that it's not great for
businesses or drivers.
Ruth Tam: But there are other food businesses whose whole models are based on
delivery. Like, they don't have done in service. Last fall, my cousin got me this gift card for
a food delivery company called Foodhini and the way they work is that they hire refugee
and immigrant chefs to make their home country's food. And they work out of a central
commercial kitchen and customers order online to have their food delivered to their
homes. And I was kind of wondering if your business has some sort of like, delivery-based
model to begin with, like, are you better off during the pandemic? So I called up Noobtsaa
Philip Vang, who founded Foodhini in 2016. Given the social-driven mission of his
company and the added pressures of the pandemic, I wondered: How is he thinking about
delivery now?

Noobtsaa Philip Vang: For us inside the kitchen we've provided masks to everybody.
Making sure everybody's wearing gloves at all times. We've also shifted to move to a three
shift schedule so that we can maintain six-feet social distancing in the kitchen and
reducing the amount of staff at a certain time working in the kitchen. And then for our
delivery drivers, we are providing gloves for each delivery driver so that for every different
delivery they can put on a different pair of gloves, providing masks for drivers and then
making sure that all deliveries are contactless. So everything is dropped right at the front
door or at the front desk. There is always a balance you have to strike with making sure
that your people are safe. You can't take 100 percent of the risk out, but can you take out
98 percent? 99 percent, right? And we're reevaluating that every day.

Ruth Tam: Are the cooks and chefs, are they employees? Are they contract workers? You
said that, you know, you had been inspired by the gig economy. And I'm just wondering
what lessons of that did you implement regarding like employee structure?

Noobtsaa Philip Vang: From the get go, we hired everybody as employees of the
company. So every, you know, every chef, everybody that we have working in the kitchen
are all employees. When we started out originally, the first year, we were paying, you
know, everybody was an hourly wage in terms of the compensation. But then within the
last about two years, we switched to salary and we started offering benefits, which was
awesome. We made a conscious effort to be really focused on investing in our people.
When you're looking at immigrant communities, they are definitely the backbone of the
restaurant industry today, and they're the ones putting in a ton of work and sometimes
aren't recognized for it.

Patrick Fort: And are the delivery drivers employees of Foodhini as well?

Noobtsaa Philip Vang: Our delivery drivers are contractors.

Patrick Fort: Okay.

Noobtsaa Philip Vang: We have a small core core team of individual drivers that we've
hired on. And so they work with us for the bulk of the deliveries. And we also have a
delivery partner that has their own workforce that we use if there is like a surge in orders
that we have to fulfill.

Ruth Tam: A thing that's on a lot of people's minds –I'll say on my mind– is when I'm
thinking about food delivery now, now all the people that the food changes hands among
before it gets to me, I guess I'm thinking about potential risk and potential harm given that
we're in the middle of this global pandemic. And it's caused me to kind of question how I
value that service. And if, like, my tips are enough or if my tips go to the person that I think
it's going.

Noobtsaa Philip Vang: Yeah, I mean, I think that's that's one of the responses we had
immediately was given, you know, everything. Most of the time, deliveries would happen
face to face, right? And so people could get tips in terms of like cash tips, right? But that's
kind of that's definitely been something that we've been wary of given the situation with
COVID-19. And so we implemented, you know, online tipping, which is basically every
night, you know, customers will get a link, a text link to submit a tip to their specific driver.
So every week we will tabulate the routes that our drivers had, who their customers that
they delivered to. And we give them 100 percent of the tip.

Patrick Fort: I think I was kind of disappointed to hear that all of the delivery drivers who
work with Foodhini aren't employees, especially because the company seems to have this
kind of like moral or ethical mission behind it.

Ruth Tam: I totally get why you're saying that. Foodhini Is trying to honor immigrants and
some delivery drivers are immigrants, too. But I don't know if it's totally fair to judge a
restaurant based on whether their drivers are full time employees or not. Like given the
flow of when people order meals, being a full time driver for one restaurant maybe doesn't
make a ton of sense. But besides that, like unless you have a ton of startup money, I'm not
sure how realistic it is for a small, independently owned restaurant to hire everyone full
time immediately. Like Foodhini didn't do that for their chefs when they first started. But
once the company got big enough, the chefs got paid more. I think all delivery drivers are
vulnerable to the same things right now, and that's obviously something we need to pay
attention to. But at least Foodhini's drivers have access to masks and gloves and they're
committed to doing contactless deliveries. I think their policies seem a little bit more
transparent than the policies at bigger companies.

Patrick Fort: We talked to some UberEats delivery drivers who didn't want to be recorded
for this podcast and they said their work is really draining. But the alternative is not having
a job at all. Having no income. So I think we need to think about these delivery apps like
on a spectrum, like you've got these big third party delivery apps that like steal tips from
their drivers.

Ruth Tam: Yeah, I think companies...They're not going to make this process easy for you,
tight. They're not going to be super transparent about their policies and how they treat their
workers. But you have to do your research and you have to decide where these
companies, big and small, where they fall on your moral spectrum.

Patrick Fort: Coming up after the break: What are the big moral questions we face when it
comes to getting groceries? And what does the pandemic shown us about our meat and
produce systems?

Mikaela Lefrak: Hey, Mikhail Lefrak here. I don't know about you, but lately I've been
trying to find fun ways to spend my evenings at home. That's why I'm so excited to host a
round of virtual What's With Washington trivia on May 14th. It's free and you'll get to spend
an hour testing your knowledge of D.C. sports teams, celebrities, famous buildings and
more. Head to WAMU.org/events to register and I'll see you on May 14th.

Ruth Tam: Dish City would not be possible without the support of our listeners. We are a
part of WAMU and it's been a big effort to shift all our show production to our homes. If you
want to keep us going during the pandemic and beyond, become a member at
WAMU.org/donate or by clicking the link in our show notes. Thanks.

Patrick Fort: So my partner and I have been trying to grocery shop like every 2 weeks
since, like work from home pandemic quarantine time has started, but sometimes the
stores don't have things we need and we need to make an emergency run for some
staples. So a week or so ago we went to Sonny's in Park View, which is like a pizza
restaurant turned grocery store type of thing. We figured going there was a slightly better
option since we wouldn't have to go to a crowded grocery store and they were also
offering contactless pickup.

Patrick Fort: Oh boy, it is raining...So when since we have an pandemic grocery shopping.
We haven't done any grocery delivery at all. But I think in our sort of moral assessment of
the situation, we figure it's better to go to the store and do what feels like putting ourselves
at risk rather than, you know, having someone else go to all of these places and I guess
increase the risk. I don't know. It doesn't really make sense now that I've explained that,
because we're also putting people at risk by going to the grocery store. So, who knows?

Patrick's partner: Yeah, I don't know, it's a good question. When I went to Safeway, like
they try to put...Every aisle is one way so that there's less people running into each other.
But like, if someone's like taking their time in front of like one item and you want to pass
them, then you're still like getting up less than 6 feet away from them. So that's not good.
But I don't know. I don't feel like I...If I hear like, oh, there's this delivery company that's
like doing a really good job protecting their employees and like they can explain that to
you, like sure, but I'm not trusting Instacart to do anything. Yeah. I guess I went too far.

Patrick Fort: Just go right here?

Patrick's partner: Are you sure? It's raining.

Patrick Fort: It's fine, we have rain jackets.

Patrick Fort: So we pulled up and we called and said we were there. And I stood in the
vestibule like near the front door. And a guy came out with a mask and he put our bags on
this table. And I picked them up and I said, thanks. We went our separate ways. And that
was it.

Patrick Fort: Contactless.

Patrick's partner: Is everything in there?

Patrick Fort: Yeah.

Patrick's partner: You checked?

Patrick Fort: Uh huh.

Patrick's partner: Including the tote bag?

Patrick Fort: Uh huh.

Patrick Fort: How do you think if you didn't have a car, you would go grocery shopping?
Patrick's partner: Well, over here we had to go...The only one we can walk to is Walmart. I
mean, we go sometimes, but only when we need a couple of things.

Patrick Fort: And you would walk to...you would walk there.

Patrick's partner: Yeah, we can. The Wal-Mart's super close. If we didn't have a car then
we would have to take the Metro.

Patrick Fort: That's true. I haven't written the Metro...

Patrick's partner: I guess maybe we could ride our bikes. But that's more your thing. I
guess that would make you ride your bike more than I already do.

Ruth Tam: It's nice that you're able to support a local restaurant with this grocery run. And
it's actually super lucky that you two have a car so you have more choices. But like you
talked about, you still got to go to the grocery store sometimes.

Patrick Fort: Yeah. Like we said, we're trying to go less, but we're still really struggling to
do like what's right when it comes to reducing the risk of exposure for us and for other
people. But at least I have that choice, right? Like whenever I do go to a grocery store, I
see everyone that works there and realize that they don't have that choice.

Ruth Tam: Grocery store workers are continuing to show up to work every day. And we
wanted to know, well, what would make them feel safe?

Waqas Ahmed: My name is Waqas Ahmed and I work at Giant Food. I work in
Springfield, Virginia, department is seafood. I'm a seafood manager. To be honest, we
didn't know it was going to be that crazy. I mean, I've never seen anything like that in my
22 years with Giant Food. I mean, shelves are empty. You know what I mean? People
getting panicked. You know, and it's basically to me, it looks like end of the world.

Ruth Tam: Has it changed your work like...does is it mean you're busier? Does it mean
you're working longer hours?

Waqas Ahmed: We are. We are busy. We are working long hours. Sometimes I have to
work overtime.

Ruth Tam: Did Giant provide workers with masks and gloves? I imagine you're working
with gloves anyway.

Waqas Ahmed: Yes. Yes. They did provide us with a mask and they gave us gloves as
well.

Ruth Tam: Does that make you feel safe at work? Do you feel like it's...you're OK?

Waqas Ahmed: To be honest, every day I have to pray before I leave my house. You
know, go with the passion, go with the prayers and come home safe and, you know, serve,
serve customers safety.

Ruth Tam: What up benefits? Are you getting any like wage increases or bonuses from
Giant?
Waqas Ahmed: Well, right now, Giant is giving us 10 percent of what you make every
week that we're getting. Everybody's getting that.

Ruth Tam: And for how long, do you know?

Waqas Ahmed: Well, they recently extended until I would say May the 30th, or 28?

Ruth Tam: Does that 10 percent match the additional risk that you feel like you're taking
by going to work?

Waqas Ahmed: Not really.

Ruth Tam: What would be fair?

Waqas Ahmed: We deserve more. I know that we deserve more because we're putting
our lives on the front line to put the groceries for customers. So I think we deserve around
20 percent.

Ruth Tam: Do you think this appreciation when people thank you for your work and for
being there and being at work? Is that appreciation new? Or have you always felt that from
customers?

Waqas Ahmed: Since the COVID-19 started, we've been getting a lot of appreciation from
customers. I have three kids. I have to come every every day when I come back in words,
have to Lysol all my clothes. I have to hop in the shower before I can see my kids and hug
my kids and hold my kids. This is some serious stuff going on. I mean, at the end of the
day, we all got to pay bills and put the food on the table for our family. My family is really
afraid. And, you know, majority of people who are working, whether it's nursing or grocery
workers, they're afraid to go to work.

Ruth Tam: What's the safest way for people to shop right now?

Waqas Ahmed: The safe way to shop is, to stay 6 feet away. Please put on a mask.
Please put on gloves when you come to the grocery stores. It's for your own safety. And
it's for us too.

Ruth Tam: That was a really hard conversation, honestly, for me to have. And it's because
I know that he's not the only worker who feels that way. There are plenty of essential
workers now, people that whose jobs that we undervalued before –and continue to
undervalue– but are essential, who say that the added safety measures and the bonuses
that they get from their employers aren't enough. Just last week, workers at Whole Foods,
Instacart, Target, Amazon and a number of other major companies organized a strike
around this. These are all companies that are making money now during the pandemic
because of their essential status. And yet workers say they aren't being protected or
compensated enough.

Patrick Fort: There are all these vulnerabilities in our food system, like especially for low
wage workers who maybe don't have tons of agency in their workplaces, that seem so
much more urgent now. We talked to Ellen Polishuk. She was raised in Virginia and
farmed for over 20 years. Now she's a consultant for some farms in the D.C. area. And she
says these issues have always been a part of our food system.
Ellen Polishuk: The food system we have is the food system we chose. Our most
important value is price. Our second most important value is convenience. And so that's
what we have been delivered. If your only measure of goodness is efficiency, then we
have a very strong food system. Maybe now we're starting to think, hey, do I care about
the people that are working in that slaughterhouse? And so all of a sudden the public is
starting to have different ideas about what is valuable, what matters to us. In that light, with
a new set of values, the food system seems broken. It seems like it isn't working. And
that's correct. It is not delivering a set of values that we didn't ask it to have before. Think
about a cast iron fry pan. A cast iron fry pan is heavy and durable, right? It lasts for
generations. They have a certain way of being really strong. But another characteristic of a
cast iron is that it's extremely brittle. If you were to go out and mistakenly dropped your
cast iron fry pan onto the sidewalk, it would crack. It breaks given a sudden stress in a way
it was not designed to handle. But if you were to take outside and drop stainless steel pan,
yeah, it would get a dent in it. It would still work. That's the difference between just being
strong in a certain way and being resilient, able to take stresses and still remain intact.

Ruth Tam: So you're saying that our food system is strong in the flawed way that we've
built it, but not at all resilient to the kinds of vulnerabilities of the pandemic is exposing?

Ellen Polishuk: Exactly. The food system is not built to be flexible and resilient and
creative. What we've seen is small farms have been able to say, oh, there's no restaurant
to sell to. OK, I've got to get my food to people eating at home. OK, I'm going to set up an
online store and they've been able to respond because they're small, nimble, and they're
close to the customer. How many meat processing facilities are there in the United States?
Well, I think there's a total of 50 or something. There used to be hundreds and hundreds
and hundreds. Well, when one goes down, it makes a really, really, really, really big
difference, doesn't it? So that's the kind of brittleness that we've seen in the system.

Ruth Tam: So I think some people listening may not understand what you mean by the
food being cheap. You're not saying that all the food out there is affordable necessarily to
everyone. You're saying the value of food is low to the average American consumer, right?

Ellen Polishuk: Yeah, that's a really important distinction. For people who don't have any
money, food is not [expletive] cheap. It's too expensive. But that's not agriculture's fault.
That's society's fault. It's a poverty issue, which, of course, is race related. And, you know,
it goes back through the ages. But by and large, it's cheap compared to how much money
we spend on everything else.

Ruth Tam: Another aspect of this is the cheapness of labor. I think we've kind of seen this
impact that you're talking about in the true price of this now. And like we see these big
meat companies, their workers say that they're failing to provide proper safety precautions.
And thousands of people are being sickened with Cauvin, 19, and it's affecting a serious
percentage of America's access to meat because these are like the nation's biggest meat
producers. Tyson's Food, JBS USA, Smithfield.

Ellen Polishuk: Right. The whole system is based on the lowest wage workers in our
economy. The people that are working in the field, harvesting our vegetables. In not just
the harvest, but in what we call the wash pack area. All they do is wash vegetables. Wash
your salad mix and then put it in those beautiful clamshell containers for you to buy at the
grocery store. All those people and then the meat packing people. Most not all, but most of
them are immigrants. And they end up with all kinds of injuries, you know, affecting their
health. Our food system relies on disadvantaged and disempowered individuals to to work
jobs that are not nice jobs. We're seeing that now. It's like the curtain is being pulled away,
like the Wizard of Oz. Like, wow, we have such a great country. Oh, look at all this
beautiful food we have. It's at the grocery store. Every day I can have strawberries every
day of the year, even if I live in Minnesota. That's the fantasy that we've been living in. And
now COVID comes along and is pulling back the curtain and you see what's behind the
curtain are people who have really tough lives. That's what it's based upon. These are now
our essential workers.

Ruth Tam: Farmers have always known the true cost of food, but haven't always
addressed it. They talked to one of Ellen's farmer clients, Mike Protas. He owns One Acre
Farm up in Montgomery County, Maryland. He delivers boxes of Proteus to a couple
hundred local families. And last fall, he put his foot down and told his customers he wanted
to pay his workers more.

Mike Protas: So I wrote an e-mail to my CSA members saying, you know, this year before
you signed up, just so you know, everybody everybody's getting paid 15 percent more,
which means you're paying 15 percent, we're all paying more. We've gone too long. I
haven't made a profit –nobody cares about Farmer Mike marking a profit, they don't care
about that. But I haven't paid myself in the last 10 years really anything worthwhile. We
can't expect people that continue working here year after year to make, you know, ten,
twelve dollars. an hour. We have to pay more. So we're all going to pay more, because if
we all mean that this is important to us, we're going to pay for it. I probably wouldn't have
the guts to make that email again. So I don't know if people really want to hear about it
right now, because they're so inundated with all sorts of other crap they're getting. Maybe
when the dust settles, its a nice time to start singing from the rooftops, why it's so
important to do all these things. But for right now, I think people are so overwhelmed with
all the horrible things and the horrible news events and everything else, maybe that's not
the time to be shoving more crap down their throat.

Patrick Fort: The way our food system exists now, the people who harvest and slaughter
our vegetables and meat have largely been out of sight and out of mind. But there are
people who have to pay for that. Ellen says that's typically been disempowered workers
who pay in terms of their health and safety. And Mike wants the customer to recognize the
true cost of local produce and pay for it, is now the time to do that?

Ruth Tam: I mean, I'm gonna go with yes, but I know that my ability to consider these
issues and to act on them is coming from a place of privilege. If grocery store workers
want to be paid 20 percent more than they are already, I can afford to consider paying 20
percent more for my groceries. And when it comes to supporting local restaurants, I can
afford to get takeout once in a while. I can even walk to the restaurant and get it.

Patrick Fort: And this is still not the full picture. Obviously the people we talk to represent
their own restaurants and their own experiences.

Ruth Tam: It's really good to hear directly from the people that I want to support, like Ana.
I was really hesitant to mess around with GrubHub and I still am not going to use them to
order food. But at least I better understand what role they play for her and a restaurant like
El Tamarindo. And it's good to hear directly from Noobtsaa about how the morality of using
delivery apps isn't always black and white.
Patrick Fort: Yeah. I mean, I certainly use delivery services in the past both for takeout
and groceries, but I think I'm becoming more hesitant to do that now. Not only because of
the effects the services might have on the restaurants or grocery stores, but also because
of the effects on the people who have to deliver the food. There are places where delivery
drivers are full time employees with benefits and union protections. But I guess I'm just
looking harder at which businesses I support and which ones I don't.

Ruth Tam: Right. Listening to Ellen made me question how I get groceries to before. I
didn't want to get a CSA produce box because I did not want to be weighed down by like
nine zucchinis a month. But I seriously started considering it or at least figuring out a more
direct way to get local produce. I think the big questions we have about the food system
will get easier for us to grapple with if we can break them up into smaller questions about
how we personally get food.

Patrick Fort: Dish City is produced by me, Patrick Fort: .

Ruth Tam: And me Ruth Tam: . Our associate producer is Julia Karron and our editor is
Poncie Rutsch.

Patrick Fort: Our theme music is by Daniel Peterschmidt and WAMU's general manager
is JJ Yore. And Andi McDaniel oversees all the content we make here.

Ruth Tam: Talk to us online on Twitter and Instagram, @DishCity. And our email is
dishcity@wamu.org.

Patrick Fort: If you loved the city, tell a friend and reviews on your podcast app. It'll help
listeners like you find our show. On our next episode. We'll be talking about the moment
cafes and restaurants and other small businesses pivoted to something totally different in
order to survive the pandemic. We'll be back in two weeks. So hit that subscribe button.